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Writer's pictureLouise Stobbs

Working them through it

Following on from my last post, I want to unravel the commonly encouraged idea of “working the horse through it”. The idea that you need to go to battle with a horse who is having behavioural issues and that if they end up complying then there is no pain issue is false. If you hassle a horse enough they will give in despite being in pain.


If someone is supposed to be a behavioural expert, then they should be able to recognise obvious (and even subtle) signs of pain and lameness in a horse. They absolutely have a responsibility to assess the horse in front of them and not just say “well the owner says he’s had all the checks so its definitely not pain”. You are one of the checks? You’re meant to be a behavioural expert? Where is your assessment? Why aren’t you telling these clients their horse is showing signs of discomfort and stress? I run a terrible business model because often my assessment is we need to go back to the vet or another relevant professional and training isn’t appropriate in this moment.


Watching extremely stressed and often obviously sore horses be put through high-stress training in the name of helping them leaves a sour taste in my mouth. I keep getting videos in my feed of horses really clearly trying to communicate pain, the owner being told the horse is aggressive and going to really hurt someone as a justification of their harsh treatment, then punishing the horse every time they pull a face until they shut down and stop doing it. The owner can now enjoy using the horse without any annoyance from the horse trying to express his feelings. Everyone is all smiles except the horse, and the poor owner doesn’t understand what just happened because they’ve been sold a story and told their horse is happy now. Fixed.


Being very skilled at coercing horses into doing things and being able to work/ride through their protests is not the same as being good at reading behaviour. You absolutely can train pain, most horses if you keep pushing and adding pressure will give in eventually. We put human emotions in, we can’t see the horse past the story we’re being told, the humans are all pats and smiles so it must be kind right? Look at what the horse is experiencing, stressing the hell out of a horse, ignoring all of their anxiety and carrying on anyway, is not kind because you call him a good boy while you’re doing it.


With these horses that get passed from trainer to vet to trainer trying to fix fix fix, I just wonder what would happen if we backed the hell off for a few months and just allowed the horse to unravel emotionally with no pressure, focused on helping them feel better rather than getting them to do stuff and then actually built them from the ground up at their pace. Sometimes the answer is no, it is not appropriate to ride this horse right now, and putting them through that in the name of “diagnostics” is not kind. We don’t need to see the horse fall apart repeatedly under saddle to decide that.


One of the rules I keep myself to strictly is if the horse isn’t okay with any part of the tacking up or mounting process then we do not get on the horse that day. Horses do not need to be ridden, that’s for us. They are so stoic and far too tolerant.


My horse Dan has discomfort in his body, yet I know I could get on him tomorrow and take him out jumping and he would do it without protest, not because he loves jumping, but because that is what he has been conditioned to do, he doesn’t realise no is an option, because it never used to be. Let’s not take advantage of the horse’s compliant nature. 🐴



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